Last week, an Atlantic superstorm going by that very name killed 69 people in the Caribbean and at least 90 in the northeastern United States. Sandy, a hurricane-turned-cyclone, boasted wind gusts of up to 224 km/h in some areas and left millions of Americans and Canadians without power.

Well, who’d want to be associated with such havoc, infamy? Who’d want to see their name in the bad-news headlines day after day? Not me.

And, parents, how much would it stink if your child’s name …?

Uh-oh. Oscar could become a hurricane.

There it is, my son’s name, just three lines above Sandy on the World Meteorological Organization’s 2012 list of tropical cyclone monikers.

The WMO has six lists for Atlantic storm names. The lists are alphabetical, alternating by gender, with 21 names each (no Q, U, X, Y, Z). They cycle over a six-year period, so this year’s list (including the name Oscar) will be up again in 2018. Only when a storm is exceptionally destructive is a name removed from the list. Think Mitch, Katrina, Camille and Flora, among others.

Had I perused these storm-name lists before become a parent, I might have ruled out all 126 current names, even Wilfred. My son might have been an Oliver, or an Avery, an Ellis. Because life’s hard enough without a hurricane haunting you.

That sort of thinking — the “hurricane-name-avoidance-strategy” — is the exception to the norm, according to Laura Wattenberg, celebrated author of The Baby Name Wizard. Hurricanes do affect baby names — positively.

“Everyone assumes that a really destructive hurricane that causes suffering and loss of life will kill a baby name,” Wattenberg said from Boston the day after Sandy blew through town. “In fact it doesn’t work that way at all. As long as the storm has an intriguing and fashionable name, the name is always going to rise (in popularity).”

Sandy isn’t intriguing or fashionable enough to have any influence, she said (no offence, Sandys of the world). But the name Camille saw a huge jump in popularity after 1969’s hurricane Camille, a Category 5 hurricane that killed more than 250 people. She added, “The closer you are to the devastation, the higher the name rises (in popularity for babies). Take the name Alicia. It saw a huge jump after hurricane Alicia of 1983, she said, especially in Texas, which was hardest hit.

“Part of it is the exposure effect,” Wattenberg said. “The name is everywhere. No one could help but think of it.”

It’s not that people are trying to pay homage to a disaster. It’s just that the name is so ubiquitous it seeps into the unconscious, as is the case with celebrity names. “It’s hard to kill off a name with publicity,” she said.

The hurricane name effect may also be a way of marking some sort of strange circumstances, say, delivering a baby in the hurricane emergency shelter. “It’s not so different from naming your baby Natalie on Christmas Day.”

But what if the storm comes after the child? “It’s a lot harder on the unlucky people who already have the name,” Wattenberg said. “They have to live through weeks or months of everyone using their name constantly in a horrible context. There’s no way to stop that.”

Edmonton mom Kim Hewitt gave birth to her second daughter, Katrina, in 2002, three years before the deadly hurricane tore through states along the Gulf Coast after reaching Category 5 status, killing more than 1,800 people, most of them in Louisiana. Hewitt and her husband simply chose the name because they liked it. “I was hoping for something a little more unique without being so out there that no one would remember it,” she said.

Little did they know a nickname would evolve for their daughter after the eponymous hurricane levelled New Orleans in 2005. “It was ‘hurricane Katrina’ whenever the toddler mess was around,” Hewitt said. “We didn’t use it so much but a lot of friends and family found it quite comical.”

This, even though her little girl was the antithesis to a hurricane: calm, peaceful, content. “You talk to her teacher and she’s the nice quiet kid in the class.”

Now that Katrina is old enough to understand, she isn’t so keen on the association. Hewitt herself said she was bothered at first, but isn’t anymore.

“Her name is a lot easier for people to remember now,” she said. “Before hurricane Katrina, people would spell it with a C or call her Katarina. No one gets her name mixed up anymore.”

For me, it’s too late. My kid has a name on the hurricane name list, and, hopefully, that name doesn’t reach the level of infamy of Mitch, or Hugo, or Stan.

Wattenberg says it’s probably not worth stressing about “what if my child’s name turns into a cyclone,” given the odds. “Such a small percentage of the storms really become memorable, I wouldn’t fret over it,” she said. “But if it would really disturb you, you could actually check the list.”

I certainly won’t take another chance. Oscar will never have a sister named Bertha.

To peruse the World Meteorological Organization’s complete list of tropical storm names, go to wmo.int, click on List of Topics and go to Hurricane Names.

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